Chapter 2: Week number 8, the end

Sup sup sup everyone?!?! As I told in my previous post that this will be my last post. We were supposed to reflect what we have learnt about ourselves during this course. So where should I begin hmm... At first it took long time for me to realize what this digital course was about. After I got on track, wheels never stopped. Got to say best course so far and time flew by and Summer is knocking on the door. I'm gonna tell what I have learnt about me and what I have learnt all in all.

1. I learnt how important positivity is. Positivity creates more positivity and it really does help you achieve your goals and dreams. I actually noticed that i'm much happier than I thought or actually I haven't thought about it much before. I also have changed my pessimistic way of thinking to more optimistic which have been great!

2. Digital world is developing so fast, you have to be on top of it or in best case scenario in front of it. If your'e not in Google you don't exist, so search engine optimization is crucial for companies. Also content marketing is super important.

3. Effectiveness of videos. We have done so many videos in this course that I have learnt that it's the most efficient way of marketing and doing and planning them is fun but not easy. Thanks to Tommi video guru of our team, we could visualize our plannings to actual videos.

4. Believing. It's only wise to believe in yourself and what you do, eventually it will lead to wanted outcome. Don't just say, really try to reach your dreams, realistic dreams.  Set goals that you can achieve but don't be afraid to be little bit crazy sometimes. Best stories usually starts with crazy thoughts.

5. Connecting with people. Be brave and introduce yourself to people, sell yourself in a positive way. Making your own net with people can open so many different doors for you, then just choose the right door for you. Taking risks is also part of succeeding. We met so many interesting persons during this course, I hope that these contacts will help me in the future,

6. Do things that really interests you. There is a reason why many of our group's projects had football in them. If you are passionate about something it's thousand times more interesting and effective to do something towards it and outcome will also be better because you have put more effort to it.

7. Lucky number. We had these little projects to other countries and it made me realize that digitalisation has made going global so easy and it should be used much in the future.

I want to thank our team POJAT (former kononen) it has been funny road, got to say. Sometimes I wonder how we got everything done so well because it didn't feel like working at all. Thank you Kyla Mitsunaga for co-operating with us, it was super cool! Thank you Linda, our digicoach! Last but not least, I want to thank our teachers Anna and Ilkka, keep it up, fantastic persons and teachers, great work!

The end!

- Miikka

Chapter 2: Week number 7 - Happiness workshop and surprises

So what's up everybody, I'm back! We are getting closer and closer to the finish line of this course and it has been crazy and thoughtful journey with ups and downs. This is going to be my second last post so get your eyes and ears ready!

Monday started as usual with basic lecture, so we thought. Ilkka had Skype-conversation with Kyla Mitsunaga and tried to ask her some questions but there were some connection problems. Suddenly Pharrel started to sing his song Happy in Youtube and Anna came with... Kyla Mitsunaga to the class, everyone was confused and started to applaud. It was pretty funny got to admit. After all the hassle Kyla started to speak and what an amazing woman, so positive, natural, compelling, happy and wise. As you can imagine Monday's theme was happiness. Kyla formed some random groups and we had these happiness tasks and discussions in groups. It was nice to hear other's opinions about happiness. Kyla had many good points and the biggest one was that you can't be succesfull if you are not happy. Happiness has been on surface on this course and I have realized that i'm actually happier than I thought. I've actually changed my pessimistic thinking to more optimistic during this course which has been great. So what is happiness? In my opinion it's a combination of things and that you can be satisfied in every part of your life. It's enjoying your life and it should be shared because happiness creates more happiness. Kyla also brought us some Korean snacks which was very nice gesture from her students and they were quite tasty. Kyla showed us happiness workshops made by her students in  Korea and gave us same task. We were suppose to make as many people in Laurea happy as we could and make a video about it. Got to say one of the most interesting task so far.

Kyla Mitsunaga

On Wednesday morning we went to school to shoot the happiness video. I'm not gonna tell you what was our idea, you check it out below. Little bit humor, little bit love, little bit positivity. We were quite glad what we could came up with. Okay lets be realistic, it's little bit cheesy but in a good way. Without further ado here it is! Video doesn't work with mobile devices.

Later on Wednesday we went to auditorium and each group presented their videos and other groups evaluated those. Again WOW! Each video was so unique and so positive, I have to be proud of our class because all the groups had put so much effort on those videos. Everyone was smiling after the video session. We also bought some Finnish goods to Kylas students. Our team bought some salted licorice, Finnish chewing gum, chocolate, and chocolate mixed with salted licorice. Hahaaa I really would like to see Kyla's students reactions when they taste Turkish Peppers, one of my favourite candies.

On Thursday we had this Javec Welc from Poland telling about numbers and business risks. At first it seemed super interesting but it was too hard to follow for me for some reason and I fell of the wagon and I couldn't catch it anymore. Shame on me, hope other students got most out of it because it really seemed very interesting and relevant topic. Math and numbers have never been my favourite subjects that might be reason why I fell off the wagon. I don't know.

After that I had this Elämäntaito lecture, which has been great course so far. Thursday's topic was stress and how to prevent it. It's surprising how many things can cause stress: Money, school, weather, relationships, eating, sports, pets, job, and so on. It's crucial to prevent it and when preventing is not possible it's crucial find a solution for stress causing things. Did you know that too much stress can raise your blood pressure and in worst case scenario it might cause death. I don't try to scare or anything I just want to tell that stress can be real pain in the ass if you let it. So create positive vibes and deal with stress correctly, that will eventually lead you to happiness!

Be happy and share the happiness

All in all very interesting week, I have been happy all week long, thanks to happiness workshop and everything. Now just have hope that my knee can handle the football, I actually bought massive support for my knee, so we'll see. Thumbs up for HIFK's ice hockey team, they have a mountain to climb in Tampere tomorrow. Well that's about it, next week's post is going to be my last one. Sorry, writing a blog has been quite interesting but i'm not gonna keep it up, it takes too much of my valuable time.

-Miikka bossman boss

Chapter 2: Week number 6, Thinglinking, tracking emotions and stuff

Yeah, I know that you missed me last week but sorry it was blog post free week and we also had online exam. It went great, I got full points of it, okay it wasn't the hardest but it needed some thinking though.

On Monday Sani Leino from Thinglink held a presentation for us. Cool, cool and again cool. Very compelling guy with positive and innovative vibes. At first we talked about what are the hottest things in digital world and it was so interesting. Few things popped out, one was Virtual Reality, which is growing really fast. I have tried these VR-glasses and they are pretty cool got to admit. Technique is pretty unique and I'm really waiting how it's going to develop in the future. Second was content marketing and videos which have been on the surface in this course. We have made content and videos for different clients and I have learned the effectiveness of videos because combining voice and visual things are the most effective way to catch audience's attention. There were big list of other things and I would have to write a book if i wanted to handle all of those. Okay one thing more, in my opinion personalization and inclusion are big trends too. Those can be combined and it's growing value that customer's really like that everything is tailored just for them. I think it makes them feel special and respected. I don't know. For example in Nordea's online bank you can personalize the content in there. So basically customer also creates content there. In my opinion very effective because Nordea have created this ''illusion'' that customer creates content also.

What is Thinglink? It's basically interactive image where you can tag picture in picture, links, videos and everything else, if you don't have it yet go and make your own account here. I made my own Thinglink picture about myself. It's like my CV plus more. Check it out here

On Monday we had also this lovely Camilla Tuominen keeping presentation about Emotion tracker. So natural woman, I really liked her style to present and she was herself all the time. She told about importance of knowing what you really feel, for example anquish can be excitment and stuff. That was great lecture and it was relevant this time because I started this Elämäntaito course which is about knowing your feelings, how to prevent stress and how to schedule your life etc. Great lecture but not much about digital marketing and I actually didn't catch how the Emotion tracker actually works.

Feel your feelings

On Friday each group presented what they had came up for Avionboard and Funking. DigiInspiration team had made supercool video for Avionboard, it was simply amazing. Good job! We also presented our video to Funking and it was pretty exciting because we really didn't know if they liked it or not and our ankle was little bit outside of their own which is musicians and artists. Our was not so surprisingly... Football of course. After showing the video to them, they kept a feedback session for us. Outcome was... that they were actually super satisfied and if I remember correctly Ile's comment was F*****g great! Pardon my french. They had also showed it in start up meeting and according to Funking team, teachers were speechless. They also gave us gift card to Stadium because they thought that the video was so great. Thank you really nice gesture! We decided to give it to Tommi, our video guru because he made the video possible. You can check it out below!

What else, as I told this Elämäntaito course started and it seemed very interesting. Oh and I also got back to football trainings, i'm so excited about that because season starts soon and I have to get fit really fast. So that's about it, see you on next Sunday!

- Miikka

Chapter 2: Week number 4, knee is okay and Next Level event wasn't so okay

I missed Tuesday's lecture again because I had doctor's appointment for my knee. Good news, all the main parts are okay but slight damage on the right side. HUH got to say because the same knee has been operated before and another surgery would crash my football career probably for good.

Back to business, on Friday we went to this Next Level event arranged by PCAscala. In the morning I checked Facebook and there were some tasks that we were supposed to do there. I was like whaaat, you got to be kidding me and why you inform us so late. Tasks were something like cleaning and showing their products and stuff. I thought that I was going to fair trade event to make new contacts and hear the guest speakers there. I'm pretty sure that this kind of tasks doesn't help us making new contacts. Sorry but not well organized at all. First impression of the place was not so good. There were no signs or anything that this event was held there. We went inside a dark staircase and still no sign. We didn't know if we were supposed to go up or down. Okay we found the place. New gym, nice and modern but not the place where I would hold an event. In my opinion this kind of positive event should also be marketed much better and much more welcoming, so lots to do for them. I got to hear one speaker there, Mika Järvelä by himself and speak was awesome. He told about his career as a coach but between the lines I tried to catch tips. It is easier ask for something after you have given something. That is true, it's called reciprocity. Invent, develop and try, that's the pattern how your development should work. I've talked much about trusting in my previous posts and Mika also talked about it, NEVER trust the word, ask always black on white. It sounds kind a harsh but it's true and it's not arrogant to ask black on white because contract concerns you and you have right to do it. When applying for a job, selling yourself in a positive way is the key thing, just have the courage to tell honestly what you can do, where you are good at and so on, forget the prattle. Learn and teach, make contacts, ask for help, develop yourself and last but not the least explore the world. If you do all those things you have possibility to succeed in a way you want. Exploring the world is crucial and it will broaden your view of thinking. I did this test recently and I have explored only 5% of the world, so lots to do for me.

I also talked this Mizudo presenter there. It's a sport brand from Japan which is not so known in Finland but in Asia it's quite big. He told that one pair of sport shoes goes through over 100 pair of hands before it can be sold. Also one shoe has so many little parts which came as a surprise for me. He had torn one shoe down there so we got to actually see all the moving parts there. Those things kind a explains also the high price of some shoes.

Mika Järvelä's presentation

Gym was small but modern and effective

Long awaited Veikkausliiga started on Saturday, PK-35 vs Rops. Me and my friends as a PK-35 fans bought season tickets for this season. Sun was shining and weather was sweet but the end result was bittersweet. PK-35 was 3-0 ahead but crashing on second half and 3-4 on scoreboard. Yeah not much to tell but if something positive have to come up with, there were lots of goals!

Season ticket

At least the weather was nice

See you on next Sunday!

- Miikka

Chapter 2: Week number 3 started little bit exhausted but things got really interesting

I missed the Monday's lecture because the cruise to Sweden. Yeah we went international and the trip was great but exhausting. I'm glad I got myself to school on Thursday because we had the most interesting speaker in this course Antti Haapsaari from architecture firm Kanttia 2. Got to say, his presentation style was amazing. He was present all the time and very natural. I actually checked around the class and everyone was listening. I actually noticed that Anna was checking the same. He told us about their projects in Egypt and how it is going towards European style in the future. There will be shopping centers which are mix of Egyptian and Scandinavian architecture. Globalization is this day and it's good thing sometimes but what I really hope that cultures stays the same because what's the point everything being similar? When time goes by, eventually it will be very boring. I've talked about mixing in couple of my posts and mixing everything in a right way is good and welcomed but roots of the cultures should still stay the same because if those don't, new generations will not know where they came from, my opinion.

Otherwise you will forget where you came from

Antti also talked about customer relationships and what is important in those. I had written in my notebook that everything should be thought by customer's point of view and instead of making lots of money you should think ways to help customers and how to make more value for them. After that money will come along those things. The most important thing is to understand customers. I also wrote that confidential customer relationships are the key things in successful business. It's actually true in every part of your life, if you have confidential relationships in every part of your life, you are winning. BUT big but, when confidence is lost, it's really hard get back again, sometimes impossible, so maybe the key thing is how to maintain it. Making contacts with new people is also crucial when building confidential relationship. First impression should be made correctly because you have only 7 seconds to make it and you don't get another chance to do it.

Antti Haapasaari keeping a presentation

In job interviews they have always asked what are my best skills for the job. I could enumerate what I can do or what have I done but I have always answered that being natural is the key thing and complying different situations with being natural. Guess what, there's only one job that I haven't gotten when I have managed to get in job interview. Being yourself will pay off eventually. That one time they chose more talented person for the job, which was more than okay for me. That leads to one thing Antti told us: BELIEVE yourself, if you don't have the courage to believe yourself that much that you could get a job or something else, then don't do it at all. It's not arrogant to believe yourself. Make your own decisions whether you want something or not. Move towards your dreams. Every decision should be made by yourself. If you want to be successful, that doesn't mean you have to be the best immediately, the point is that you have to be able to see in future that you can be the best or at least good at it. For example this blogging thing, i'll probably never win the blog of the week but i'm 100% sure that i'm getting better at it all the time and that's my main goal in this. This is really close topic for me, because those things I mentioned before, got me back to school in first place. I want to learn more and achieve something meaningful in life, for myself and for others.

Remember that

We also got another assignment and we actually got to choose from two presentation. First presentation was held by Tuomas Kidron and Viveka Kulmala from Avionboard. Company sells those electronic boards, you have probably saw in the streets. Presentation was very natural and energetic, easy listening some might say. In addition of marketing their product they also talked about importance of making contacts, which I also mentioned earlier. My first touch to those boards was in Dubai where in breakfast buffet kids balanced with those and it was super annoying. But when I got to try it in my work, it was actually really fun and I wanted to roll around Jumbo with it. But it's very hard for me to find anything useful out of it but fun. That's why we decided to take task from Funking team. They have developed this idea of ultimate fanning thing that where artists or other celebrities can share exclusive material in style of snapchat but little bit differently. We are looking forward to this task because being a fan is so big thing and you can be a fan of basically everything. Idea is originally Ilkka's from Funking and one of his friend. Ile's enthusiasism shines through when he talks about it. Hope we have something to give them for this idea and I hope this pays off for them in future because I really do believe that this idea is possible to execute successfully!

Lots of blasting again, hope you enjoyed, see you on next week!

-Miikka

Chapter 2: Week number 3, MRI-scan, Mazda marketing plan and other stuff

I missed Monday's lecture because i had MRI-pictures taken from my knee. Fingers crossed that I don't need another surgery. Athlete never sees healthy day expression is made for me unfortunately. It was pretty hard for me to stay put for 45 minutes in a tube where you can't move at all. I still made it!:D

MRI-scan

On Tuesday my team told me the topic of assignment from Mazda and it was super interesting BUT deadline in three days, come on! It is very nice that we have possibility to do co-operation with this kind of world wide companies. I really do appreciate it but it's only glimpses to real learning because everything has to be done in a rush. Assignment was to make an innovative marketing plan for new Mazda 2 car. We got it done by Tuesday and we were excited about our idea. Idea was to market it in radio. The place where people listens radio most, is in the car, morning on the way to work and the most listened radio station is Suomi Pop especially the show called Aamulypsy which is aired 6-10am. Our idea was to put Jaajo Linnonmaa to market it, because he is one of the host in this show and probably the funniest man in Finland. We also got couple of other ideas too, how to ease the car purchasing decision.

Mazda 2

We kept the presentation to Mazda people on Thursday and feedback session was great. We got positive feedback that our presentation was strict and natural, the points we showed them why to use our idea and for that we had counted the marketing budget roughly. We got negative feedback also because our idea wasn't the newest or the most innovative. All in all nice and interesting assignment but waaaaaay too short. Good thing was honest feedback session from Mazda people, the professionals from marketing field and next time we turn the criticism to win. I've always thought that criticism is the best feedback, because if you never get it, you don't get an honest opinion what needs improvement or what have to be done differently.

On Thursday we got another assignment from PCA scala-gym, which has focus on personal training and coaching training tailored for the companies. Presentation was held by Mika Järvinen who has actually lectured for us before. Very interesting speaker and rarely uses anything but his own voice. They have this fair day event coming at their gym and our task is to come up with marketing solutions how to get more followers on their social media channels and how to get participants to this fair event, using social media competitions and other stuff. Mika told that he is not very good, when it comes to social media stuff and I actually remember from last year's presentation when he showed their website... I'm glad that some improvement has happened because old site hmm.. Ascetic might be the best word haha. This kind of tasks where teams can actually see the outcome of their work, are the best. I think it's important to see outcome of our work and in my opinion teachers should trust us more because they have been amazed many times in this course what the teams have came up with.

On Thursday we had this freelancer video dude who held a presentation about videos. Purpose of the video, planning and manuscript are the key things. If you need video for something you should think the very purpose of it. Costs will be the financial resources which are available to use for the video and based on this it's possible to approach the video maker. He also told that it's important to ask from the video maker, how many repair times is included in the deal. This presentation was very useful because we haven't had this point of view at all that if we need video from someone else. In this course we have only made videos to somebody. Either way video business is growing and it's one of the most effective ways to market nowdays and in this course we have had glimpse to video world which have been very new to me.

On Sunday we are going on a cruise, so Sweden here we come!

See you on next week!

- Miikka

Chapter 2: Week number 2 , law issues and secret of life

Hi everyone again! This week started on Monday when we had lecture about law issues held by Marjaana Marmo. She told us what consumer protection act and commercial code means. For me as a salesman consumer protection act has come pretty familiar. Everyday I have to deal with customers reclamations and handle them within the law. For me this lecture was extra useful because I can use this information in my working life and I got memory refreshing information about it. In my opinion consumer protection act is pretty shady, for example if customer buys a product, She/he will have 6 months to open it and if some fault comes up it should be assumed that the fault was there when customer bought it. Basically customer can use the product for 6 months and brake it and if customer can proof that the fault was there when it was bought, she/he will get new product or refund. Commercial code wasn't so familiar for me so it was very nice to hear about it. Marjaana also gave us 7 tasks considering those laws and we had to solve them. Very useful to do those kind of things in practice.
We also got our video for Nobot ready, you can check it out below!

On Wednesday started this E-service competence course, interesting topic and very relevant at this point. E-services are the most growing business at the moment and I think its going to be huge and it will eventually replace many old services and jobs we know.  But I'm sure that it will also create many new possibilities. Interesting topic and lots to do, we'll see how I manage to do everything on time.

Kevin and Lasse gave us presentation on Thursday considering marketing research. It's crucial for companies to make market research properly. Kevin and Lasse told us an very good example what happens if you do it wrong. Nokia Failed their tablet and mobile market research badly because they didn't understand customers enough. As you can see, there is no Nokia anymore, i'ts Microsoft nowdays and they can't compete with Apple or Samsung at all. Companies should also know the markets they are stepping to, where are they going to be situated in there and which companies they should compete with.

Kevin and Lasse keeping presentation

On Thursday Anna Ikonen gave us lecture about secret in life. At first when she started to talk about it, I thought that it's going to be some hippy stuff, which actually would have been interesting too haha. I'm myself little pessimistic always and I always try to be realistic when it comes to real life matters. This lecture opened up my mind more! Your thoughts attracts things you are thinking about. It's the law of attraction. If you send message to universe, it will send something back, so if you are positive, you get positive back. Negativity to positivity is the key and as I told in my last post, your own thinking is one thing you can control 100%.

Placebo effect is funny thing, I've red so many articles when some medicines had been tested and how the people who actually didn't get the drug felt better than those who got it. So you can think positivity as a placebo effect, if you feel positive, you'll probably get positive things back in your life in form of health or thoughts or something else. I actually red this article today which claimed that actually healthy eating could replace many medicines because if people would eat healthier some of the medicines wouldn't even have to exist. But you can't rely blindly on that, I watched this episode of Arman ja viimeinen ristiretki, there was very sick little boy in Africa who needed medicine badly but only thing he got was some voodoo stuff  from a local priest. That was really sad and I really don't know what happened to that kid. Even though drug business is very much about money and making profit, those companies creates life saving stuff too.

I will rest my case here, are you ready to make a revolution in your mind and change negativity to positivity? As Dennis Brown sings, it's all about living, loving, caring and sharing.

 Peace and love!

-Miikka

Chapter 2: Back to school, mental illustration and cool projects

Winter holidays are over and we got back to business. On Monday we presented our videos to Eija from Super Park and that was exciting because I'm pretty sure that she couldn't imagine even in her wildest dreams how good they're going to be. We also presented our thinking how they should improve their marketing in social media and marketing altogether. My thoughts were true, all groups got only positive feedback and Eija was thrilled. I think Super Park will rise from the ashes to shining star because with the possibilities and potential they have, it would be only fair. Also the winner of which Super Park video got most viewers was revealed and team DigiInspiration won, they got over 1000 views, very nice!

Winner of Super Park assignment, Congratulations DigiInspiration!

Ilkka held lecture for us about thinking. Only thing you can control 100 % is your own thinking. That's true but it's actually way harder than it sounds. We tried this mental illustration thing in school where you put your eyes closed and think of couple of people close to you, then big problem you have, after that you go the most comfortable place you can think of and ask them what should you do. That was variation of Napoleon Hill's invisible counselors method. I had unfortunately such a bad focusing day so it didn't work for me this time but I will definitely try that next time when I have a big problem. I've red this article that people only uses 10% of brain capacity and if we were able to use all of it, we could speak telepathically and we could read other's mind. Reading other minds would be probably little scary but super cool, watch the movie What women want haha. That probably would make world also little quieter place but imagine how different world would be.

Emotional intelligence is pretty awesome thing if you think of it. You recognize your own and others emotions and you can use them to guide your behavior and thinking. Subconscious is very strange but yet awesome thing and power of it can't be denied. It's also one of the things you can affect for example with jedi mind tricks, and i'm not talking about hip hop duo which is also great, check the link Jedi Mind Tricks

Hahaa got ya! I meant this one Jedi Mind Tricks, very nice examples how your mind and subconscious can be changed.

Creativity is everything in the world and everyone. I had wrote this to my notebook because it was so well said, it was from one of the voice messages Ilkka showed us during the lecture. Everything and everyone... that's lot of things. This sentence made me realize all the possibilities we had in world and all the possibilities we haven't found yet. As I told in my pitching video that everything is combination of something, I'd like to add that it's also about finding the right combinations.
Talking about videos, we also made greeting video from our group to Kyla Mitsunaga considering her PET talk. All the groups should come up with one question about her talk. I'm really waiting her to answer us! Well that was Monday.


On Friday we got two guest speakers and we got our fourth assignment, nice! First we had presentation held by Jouni Varpelaide from Nobot company which creates social media solutions for example websites and content in social media. The presentation was awesome and very appealing. I loved that the company keeps young people in the center of it and actually almost all the contracts with customers are made by young employees. That's the way to involve younger people! Nobot's values were also very interesting because their focus was on transparency and lacking of secrets which leads to healthy environment in company. Building trust is crucial. Our assignment was to make short video for them from the book they've made: Guidebook to healthy company (Terveen yrityksen työkirja) which you can download for free on their website. Our video will be from chapter 10 which is about caring, inclusion and celebrating. Task is to create video how those things should be done in our dream working place. Looking forward to it because Nobot was little bit mystic and I wouldn't be surprised if they would use the gestures groups come up with in their company's real life.

Other speaker was Joanna Purosto from MMA (Myynnin ja markkinoinnin ammattilaiset) and I liked it also very much. She presented many basic points about selling but she emphasized meaning of asking the right questions, which is sometimes really hard because you can't read customer's mind. I think every salesman got unique style of selling and it's not about the guidebook which says for example open questions are always so much better than closed ones and you have to follow some specific guideline in every sales event. Environment changes, so should you and you have to comply in each situation you get in. And just to be sure, I don't say that guidebook material is unnecessary, NOO, it's very crucial know the basics and more BUT you don't have to follow it exactly every time, you can think of it more like a red line and everything around the line changes. If you are good enough you don't have to follow every guideline exactly, actually in my opinion when you don't have to do that, you are possibly better than someone else because then you have thought by yourself. As I told you in my last post that it's possible to mix stuff up, pick the best ones, shake them, add your own thinking there and waduuup, you have your unique style. Oh did I mention that if something doesn't work, you can leave it or replace it with something better. I've also noticed that sometimes closed questions are more effective than open ones;D it depends on environment your are in, how impressive you can be and how you have managed to perform the whole sale session. You can be perfect and learn all the books about selling and marketing upside down and still not be the best salesman. My opinion!

Thanks for reading!

- Miikka

Glimpse to my winter holiday

Winter holidays, oh yeahh! This blog post will be little different than my other posts because we didn't have lectures at all. I'm gonna give you little glimpse to my outside of school life and it's not my style at all. I'm gonna keep this post short, so I don't reveal too much;)

On Monday we had little Fifa 16 session  with my friends. After tournament, not much to tell, I won as always. Maybe home field gave me little advantage but I don't admit.

The greatest game ever

On Tuesday we had planned to go see Champions League match Arsenal - Barcelona to Sports Academy. Me as a Barcelona fan since 2004 and Roni and Miro true Arsenal fans. I also got Henri and Tommi along side with me to support Barcelona. After couple of beers and wine bottles Barcelona won 2-0! Sorry guys but I'm not sorry at all. I don't want to brag too much because one game still left and anything can happen in football.

Messi scored 2 goals against Arsenal and led Barcelona to victory

On Saturday I had my old work mate's going away party which made me little bit tired on Sunday if you know what i mean;) And of course I had left all school stuff for Sunday but no worries I got everything done on time. Our only task on this week was to watch Kyla Mitsunaga's video. My hangover little bit distracted my thinking but the video was simply amazing. At first she talked about how different words with and at  can be. After that the topic brightened to me. One point was that teachers should learn with their students and me as a student should think am I learning with teacher or am I learning from teacher Just watch the video, very nice points there. I've actually always thought that learning with others is very good educational method because if you think about it, there's much more possibilities and ideas in group, just pick the best ones and add your own thinking there and VOILÀ. All in all pretty footballish week but what can I say, the best sports in the world!

See you on next week, probably little bit more school related stuff!

-Miikka

Week 5, take a comfortable position and enjoy this blog post!

Week 5 started on Monday with lecture about marketing in social media, again held by Anna Ikonen. First of all I have to thank the teachers for the timing of this lecture because as I told in my last post, we had this assignment from Lacybox to make a social media marketing campaign for them. In lecture we talked about what have to be taken in consideration when starting campaign in social media. What, when, where, who and how is the main guestions basically in every marketing campaign but when going online there are lots of other things to think about. It is a long process from customer's awareness of product to actually buying it and there's different kind of buying scenarios too. Couple of scenarios are webrooming vs showrooming. In webrooming customer searches information from internet and make the purchase in store but in showrooming customer checks the product in store and then makes the purchase online. I thought this through and I came up that I'm mixing of these two. Usually I search from the internet the best solution and then go to store to check it out and then I decide is it cheaper or easier to buy from internet or in store. In my work I hate customers who come to the store and takes my time for half an hour asking questions about something and then says: "Yeah i get it cheaper from online",  that's why I search the information first so i don't have to waste salesman valuable time more than I have to.

Process of making purchase

Anna also showed us examples what kind of things can impact on our minds when it comes to marketing in social media. Especially in videos or pictures you have to think for example coloring, effects, sounds, lenght, pictures, face impressions, texts and much more if you want to succeed and get wanted outcome in marketing campaign in social media. Our group took the lesson and we tried to think all of those things when we did the assignment for Lacybox. Anna also showed us some examples how effective videos can be and this one below I've checked couple of times more because it was absolutely great and I felt united and happy after that. Try also think the combination of all of the effects I mentioned before. By the way I actually didn't realize the lenght of it at all. Enjoy!

                            


On Friday we presented our social media marketing campaign to Lacybox and feedback was mostly positive and owner of Lacybox Lynn-Marie Sederlöf Airisto thought that she could use some of the material in her future Instagram posts. She also liked our humor in the posts. Our team got also little bit criticism because we had used so many pictures instead of using same pictures in different platforms. Sometimes simpler is better. That actually reminded me that in last weeks post I forgot to mention team Funking's idea to SSM which was great. Their idea was that distributors also collect the adverts away from households and recycle them. Effective, environmental, doable and most of all simple. I'm, so idealistic, some also might say sometimes ADHD, I usually got so many ideas right away that I forget that sometimes simple solution could be more effective than hundred ideas. All in all Lacybox assignment was thoughtful and we learned a lot from it.

As wise man once said

That reminded me that Anna gave us also task to analyse one of the quotes she gave us. I chose Wendy Piersall's ''Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first''. In my opinion there's something wrong in this quote. I understand that it means basically that how popular you are in social media channels, how active you are in social media and how much followers you have there, the higher you get in Google. BUT something is forgotten... It's $$$ money $$$, you can buy your place in google if you have enough money. Based on this I made up my own quote '' Money rules the world if you let it ''. Somebody else might have made something similar but either way something to think about.

Right on

Friday's second lecture we got to the point that everyone had waited, presenting the promotion videos which all teams made for Superpark. WOW was the reaction after seen all of them. I really loved the different ankles and stories that teams had came up with. Got to give little bit respect to other teams, I've checked Funking team's and DigiInspiration team's videos again couple of times because I really liked them. But got to stand our team's ground I think that our team's video is supercool too and our ankle was to shoot it for (local) sport clubs and that's why we had our football jerseys on. Our second point was that Superpark should widen their target group because all of our team members are over 20 years old and Superpark's target group is 9-16 years old and we had so much fun there. They could advertise it more like an sport event than fun day at the park because sporty lifestyle is on the surface at the moment. So without further ado, below is our video, ENJOY!

Yours sincerely,

Miikka

Week number 4: SSM and going crazy in Superpark

On Monday we presented our ideas to SSM (Suomen suoramainonta). Like I told in the last post our task was come up with a solution(s) what else distributors can do than distribute adverts and how SSM can improve their marketing in social media. Our idea to them was that they should create a website where is possible to customer put help needed for example cutting lawn, cleaning, snow work or babysit. Then worker can take the jobs from the website. Point was that those are pretty easy skills that most of the distributors can do. When the job is done, customer confirm it, gives feedback to worker and worker gets paid. Check out Handy.com so you might get the idea better. Other point was that in today's economic situation it is so difficult to get any kind of job without experience and this is good way for younger people to get that. This kind of thing also gives good picture and respect for company also because youths are Finland's future. Our point was also that our solution creates value for every part of it for example job experience for younger people, respect and visibility for SSM and of course for customer that somebody helps them with tasks they don't have time to do. We also encouraged SSM to be more active in social media and if they want to reach young people they must speak their "language". Group Fantastic four had taken this idea little bit further and they made an example of the website and how it should look. Well done again!!

Feedback from SSM representatives was only positive and they liked our idea very much because of our viewpoint of young people and how they should be treated. Ilkka also gave us positive feedback about presentations marketing style. All in all SSM representatives were wondering on and on how they are impressed what every group had came up with. Anna also told that they needed convincing to come co-operate with us. Shame on them!! I'm pretty sure that they are thinking differently now and hope they realize to apply projects like this more often because we are the future's working force and we know how our generation thinks

On Wednesday we went to check out the Superpark and shoot some video material for our promotion video to them. WHAT A PLACE IT WAS! We literally went crazy there, we were like kids again. We had such a good time there playing football, floorball, baseball, basketball etc. And we got pretty good material for the video too, you'll see! At the end of the day we were exhausted and we didn't realize it until we left there. What a great way to do sports. We would definitely recommend this place to everyone because you don't even realize how much you get exercise there. For the most people (like myself), I hate just to go jogging, I need something else there, that's probably why I play football;D just kidding football is the greatest sport ever! But Superpark is another solution for people who needs something else there.

Yeah we had our football jerseys on in Superpark for a reason

On Friday I missed the bus and i missed the first 15 minutes of presentation that Lynn-Marie Sederlöf gave us. I catched up pretty fast and we actually got our fourth assignment. When I heard what was it I was little bit disappointed to be honest. Task is to make marketing campaign for subscribe webpage Lacybox. It includes land page designing, Facebook posting, Instagram posting, okay at this point it doesn't sound so bad, wait when you hear what the product is...:D WOMEN'S UNDERWEAR and our group should target the campaign to hen parties. Okay i'm not afraid of women's underwear I've seen them before but I really don't know how to advertise them or how to advertise hen parties. But when I taught this through it actually doesn't sound so bad because i'm willing to improve myself all the time and I really hate if I suck at something, so i'm gonna take this as self development and we will nail this campaign.

This is how i would describe this task: Even though it seems to be hard, it's still possible

Yeah thank you for reading, see you on next week!

Week number three is almost over so what's new?

On Tuesday we had two interesting guest speakers telling about companies they work for. First was representative from Superpark. It's indoor activity park where you can do lots of fun stuff for example skate, cycle, try baseball, shoot football in radar etc. So basically fun park for duracell bunnies like me. Superpark is actually first client for our team and our task is to make an advertising video for them and choose the ankle to whom we are going to advertise it. YEEES finally we get down to real business! In my opininon Superpark has very cool idea because they are trying to combine activity and digitalisation which is very important in nowday's world. Kids, youngsters and also adults should move much more to keep healthy lifestyle in today's digital world. Actually I've never heard about the company before and have lived in Vantaa for quite some time. Something is clearly wrong in their marketing because in my head they should've reached Vantaa already and this kind of activity park should be on everybody's lips. Hope our video will help them reach more audience. Their main target group according to presentation is young people aged 9 to 16. I think that there is a gap in markets for older people, I mean like ages 20 to 50 for example Christmas party's and for the sport clubs. They have mentioned those in their websites but when I asked my football team mates have they heard of Superpark, they hadn't'. I also asked from my working mates and neither had they. Oh did I mention that my football team is from Vantaa and I'm working in Jumbo which is walking distance from Superpark. Something to think about.

Even though you have reached one target group it doesn't mean that your job is finished

Our second speaker was from SSM (Suomen suoramainonta) and we got our second task from them. They distribute advertisements and their distribution channel reaches 85 % of households in Finland which is quite impressive. So 15 more percent to go;D. Question why stayed in my mind because according to presentation it's the key word of understanding things. After you understand why, you can move to the next questions how and what. Representative also talked about purpose of doing work. That is actually what I have taught of a lot. Companies main target is to make money but my purpose for working is not make money for the company. That's one of the main reasons why I got back in school, I want make something that matters to me, something I can be proud of, something I really like to do. Those are the motivators I need, if  I'm not interested in something, I do it with half a lights (puolivaloilla). Money should come to my pocket and company's pocket side of those things. We also talked about passion and how it's one of the key things which leads to actions. Got to agree with that because when I'm passionate about something I'm usually very good at it. In today's world money is not good motivator enough. Our task was to think some other things that their distributors can do than distribute and how to improve their communication and marketing styles. They got mounting to climb on that, got to say. Their only social media channel was Facebook and last post was two months ago. I also think that companies should understand how good actually message application Whatsapp is, we actually use it in our work everyday. In my first blog I told my rebellious attitude towards social media, I meant it in personal life BUT for companies it's crucial if they want to keep themselves in competition. There is no digital strategy anymore just strategy in a digital world. They have many young distributors in SSM working for them and to young people social media is everyday life. In my opinion that is huge possibility to think wider. There's a lots of other things that distributors can do side of distributing and we are presenting our ideas of it to SSM on Monday. On next week's post I will tell our ideas, did they like them and feedback.

Think of your purposes

Thursday Anna gave us a lecture about cultures and how different they can be. It is vital to everybody understand differences between cultures. Also companies should be aware of that going global doesn't mean that you are international, companies should know the differences between cultures where they are expanding to. Cultures can be categorized so many different ways that it is impossible me to open all of them to you. There's a coffee culture, food culture, time culture, cultures in different continentals and of course in different countries, Laurea has different culture than Haaga Helia etc. Everybody knows that Finnish people are for example more undemonstrative than Thai people but there can be similar behavior in Thailand also than in Finland. In my opinion culture is a behavior model that you learn when you are a kid and when you grow you add there continuously something. What I mean that everybody has their own culture inside of them because we are individuals. It is also important to think of your own behavior for example in discussion situations with somebody who's from the different culture. They might understand your tone wrong, your gestures wrong, your jokes differently. It is iceberg because you only see 1% of a person and other 99% hidden. BUT remember trying to understand the cultural differences is gesture itself and I think that it is one of the things that everybody appreciates.

Okay that was my blasting, see you on next week!

Whats up week number two!

Waduuuup everybody?!? Here is summary of second week and much more. Enjoy!

Tuesday 26.1.2016 we had a lecture held by Anna Ikonen and it was about branding yourself and what should take into consideration. At the beginning Anna told us how my generation are digital natives and how we were born in digital era. She also explained why it is hard to older people to get along with digitalisation. Reason is because we were born with it, older people have to learn it from the very beginning. It was very interesting and made me think a lot. Anna also made us think and write how we use digitalisation in our everyday life. Below is what I came up with, I actually drew because as you can see I'm pretty awesome drawer.

The first picture is my mobile phone

If you didn't know, your personal brand is YOU. ''Your name is your brand and face is your logo'', that was a line from one slide in lecture and it was pretty nice phrase got to say. Anna also told us about making first impression and basically how it takes only seven seconds to make it and it is very hard to change afterwards. ''You don't get a second chance to make an first impression''. That's a line everyone should take in closer view because if you have only seven seconds, you should do it right. It was also quite interesting when we talked about what you give yourself to others. My public self is what I show to others for example in Facebook. My hidden self is what I choose to hide from others. Third was blind spots which are the things of me that I don't see but others do. That was pretty funny because Anna gave us example of it and I can share pretty similar with you. In high school one of my friends kept this presentation and kept saying ''totanoinni'' and we started counting them. After the presentation we told that he said over hundred times that, so maybe you should stop it:D...And I never heard him saying ''totanoinni'' again. Fourth is my unconscious self and it means parts I don't see and neither do others. For example who would you save from the sinking ship if there were your family and you have a chance to save only one. That's a impossible question!

On Thursday 28.1.2016 we had this awesome guest speaker Heini Karppinen from Mehackit. She told us what she do and she have done. She made me realize very good points for example that I have more working connections that i knew because every company I've worked for is attached to other companies. That made me think what I have done and what I can do. Heini also told that is good to have skills first and dreams after because your skills are propably the key thing achieving your dreams. She also told basics how group sales actually works, so if something works here in Finland in some place, it'll propably work in similar places somewhere else. And other good point was for me because i'm salesman myself that those who buy the first product typically also buys the second one.
I watched recently the movie Theory of everything which is based on Stephen Hawkins life. After the movie I made quick searches about him and in one of his interviews he had told that he are afraid that digitalisation develops faster than we learn to use it. That's exactly what Heini Karppinen told us. SCARY!

Movie was okay but it should have had more information about Stephen Hawkings thesis

Then we had two Kevins who told us project they made for air purifier company. They had a pretty good point that we are privileged to have so much technological skills. The project they made for the company was making the websites better, marketing in social media etc. Decision makers in that company was middle aged bosses who didn't know how to do that. So pretty basic sounding stuff, of course it's not that simple and they have to be very good at those things. They actually got paid for that, well done! So I learned that I really have to start thinking what I really can do because some of the basic stuff I know might not be basic to somebody else.

Third Kevin of the day

Our main task of the week was make a pitching video. Nooooo videos again... If you remember from the first post, that is not my number one thing. I had many ideas right away but executing them is different thing :D So with basic cut and glue style editing I came up with this. Enjoy!

Very exciting course of digital Business started

On tuesday 19.1.2016 first week of digital business was kicked off. Actually  I didn't know what to expect and actually still don't know. At the moment because i know so less about this course, I really hope that it will at least improve my English skills to the top. Tuesdays lecture was my first of this year and my focusing wasn't the best. I knew that we would have the same team that we had last years project. It's great because with this team we had so much fun doing the project last year. First things first, we were told that we are going to write a blog in this course. At first i was like ''You got to be kidding me?!''. Okay i'll take you little bit back in time. I have always been little bit rebellious when it comes to social media or something related to it. I actually signed up on Facebook in last October because we had this Bspirit course which kind a made me to. I don't know why and it's strange because i'm always very aware what is happening in digital world and i actually work in a electronic store. So writing a blog... Hmm okay i'll write you a blog!

On Tuesdays first lecture we had these two awesome guest speakers Laura Laukka from last years course, who was selected to write a blog to MMA because her blog has achieved great success. The other one was Ronja Salmi, very talented young woman who has achieved so much in her life even though she is only 22 years old, very inspiring got to say. She had lots of very good points and one which stayed in my mind was saying YES to everything and how it might open up the doors you couldn't even imagine.

Maybe this movie inspires me to say more YES

Our first task as a group was think and make a presentation how the digital world is going to look in 2020. That was really fun and our group POJAT (former KONONEN, thank God we changed the name) came up pretty awesome and yet little unrealistic ideas from time travelling to cars opening with fingerprints. Our ideas might have been kind of things that we maybe want to happen;D

And on Thursday 21.1.2016 we got to hear what other teams had came up with. Very crazy and yet interesting ideas was shown and it opened up little bit my own thinking too. One group (FantasticFour) really impressed me because they had pretty similar ideas with my own about that digitalisation shouldn't affect so much in kids and ourselves and how we should enjoy the things around us for example the beautiful nature. And the point that we should actually take a step back was awesome. Props for that!!! I think that first step is to realize the problem and then do something about it.

  This kind of nature we have #VisitedOneTimeInSummerCottageLastSummer

On Thursday we had little bit guidance how to make a video. Well that was new. We got this task before lunch that we should make one minutes video clip and edit it. I was like basic me ''Yeah yeah easy piece of cake'' style, the ones who knows me, knows what i'm talking about. So below is what i came up with. Oh and the topic was Friday...


                                     

Do I need more practice? Nooo I'm finnish man I will learn myself. To be honest I'm pretty sure i need little bit more guidance with that. Glad we have Tommi in our group, maybe he will help me. All in all week was great and I can't wait what's coming up next! Hope you enjoyed reading (like it's possible:D),

See you on next week!